Wastewater team creates mobile testing units

A team of wastewater treatment plant technical advisors at Northumbrian Water have designed and created mobile analysis units to monitor and improve discharge water quality.

The pair of Site Wastewater Analysis Trailers (SWAT) were created by the team after being awarded funding at Northumbrian’s annual Invest-Quest innovation competition.

One of the units analyses wastewater as it enters a treatment site to provide operators with information about what is in the sewage and if any adjustments are required to the treatment process.

The second unit checks water quality before the treated water is discharged back into a river.

Laura Evans, technical advisor at Northumbrian told Utility Week the trailers would improve how the teams operated and replace the need for samples to be manually taken and analysed in a laboratory.

More tests can be conducted each day, which Evans said would be particularly beneficial for compliance testing for discharge levels set by the Environment Agency (EA).

The EA’s 2018 assessment of the performance of England’s nine water and wastewater companies found that Northumbrian was the only one performing at the required level.

Both the EA and Ofwat tasked the sector with more ambitious targets for reducing pollution incidents.

Ofwat told firms throughout the PR19 process that they must improve performance and find innovative ways to improve systems and operations to achieve ODIs.

Evans explained that the mobile units, which will be moved around plants as required, would make compliance testing quicker and give more information with each test.

“We take and analyse manual samples to check everything is working well at the plant at different stages of treatment,” Evans said. “But this only gives a snapshot of what is happening at the site at the time.”

She said the testing was time consuming and did not give information about different parts of the treatment process, however the SWAT units will enable technicians to make adjustments to specific parts of the plant based on what a sample contains.

Analysis can be carried out 24/7 for levels of various chemicals including ammonia checking alkalinity and PH levels, which previously had to be tested for separately.

The amount of each chemical can then be adjusted to meet the permitted levels and ensure the wastewater leaving the plant is of the highest quality when it returns to the environment.

Evans said the level of analysis gives information that might have not been picked up on through manual samples. This directs the teams to a specific part of the plant that requires attention to bring dosing of chemicals to the normal levels.

She said the trailers would be used for in-depth testing as well as daily checks and could be moved between all wastewater treatment sites in Northumbrian’s region.

The team that presented the SWAT idea at the company’s innovation funding pitch had been inspired by a former colleague – Bernie Granville – who had first suggested mobile analysis.

The design of the trailers built on a mobile unit operated by United Utilities but, according to Evans, with additional analysis capabilities that will measure different parameters in these two units.

The units, named Bernie and Richard after former employees, are due to be commissioned this month before deployment.